Abstract: An improved method is disclosed of compressing, for storage or transmission, the information contained in a bi-level digitized input image by separate handling of a corresponding template image and a compressed image, which method is capable of handling "white-out" areas of the image. In accordance with the method, the template image is subtracted from the input image to generate the compressed image, the subtraction is characterized in that the subtraction step determines, for each pixel, whether the pixel is a "removed pixel" and, if so, the pixel is assigned to be black in the compressed image. A pixel is a "removed pixel" if the corresponding pixel in the template image is black, and the corresponding pixel in the input image is white.

Abstract: A lamp guarding unit 26 of a backlight 20 for a liquid crystal display is detachable from a lamp holding unit 24 fixed to a light-guiding plate 22 in a direction perpendicular to a light illumination surface of the light-guiding plate 22. Therefore, in replacing a fluorescent tube 44, it is not necessary to replace the whole backlight 20 or for the user to touch the fluorescent tube 44, which is difficult to handle. Because of the perpendicular removal, only a small space is needed for the replacement. Thus, the fluorescent tube 44 can be replaced safely and easily, and only a small space is required for this replacement.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for mapping the character and location of small surface variations on a planar surface. Energy is supplied to an object in close proximity to the planar surface to thereby raise the temperature of the object. The object is moved with respect to the planer surface substantially constant. A decrease in temperature of the object is detected when it is in proximity to the variation to define the location and character of the variation. The energy supply may be thermal energy or optical energy but preferably is electrical energy which heats a resistive element. Preferably, the object is the magnetoresistive head of a disk drive assembly. The surface may be that of a magnetic recording material. The change in temperature is detected by monitoring the resistance of the magnetoresistive coil of the head. The energy may be supplied in pulses to obtain higher peek temperatures while avoiding mechanical distortion of the object.

Abstract: A display assembly includes a display screen having a predetermined generally planar area for displaying transmissive data. A light source is provided for generating light of predetermined intensity, and a circular Fresnel lens is disposed between the light source and the display means, the circular Fresnel lens imaging the light source through the display means and onto an opposite side of the display means. A diffuser is disposed between the light source and the display means for diffusing the light. The intensity of the light source is selected to be appropriate for direct human viewing of the transmissive data.

Abstract: An instruction scheduler for a computer, capable of speculatively scheduling load instructions by moving certain categories of load instructions in an input instruction sequence from a source block of instructions to a target block of instructions to form an output instruction sequence, the instruction scheduler comprising: logic for selecting a data-independent load instruction as a candidate for rescheduling; logic for determining whether the base register that the load instruction makes use of and/or the contents thereof meets any one of a number of conditions; logic for moving the selected load instruction from the source block to the target block in response to determination that any one of the conditions is met.

Abstract: Silicon-VLSI-compatible photodetectors, in the form of a metal-semiconductor-metal photodetector (MSM-PD) or a lateral p-i-n photodetector (LPIN-PD), are disclosed embodying interdigitated metallic electrodes on a silicon surface. The electrodes of the MSM-PD have a moderate to high electron and hole barrier height to silicon, for forming the Schottky barriers, and are fabricated so as to be recessed in the surface semiconducting layer of silicon through the use of self-aligned metallization either by selective deposition or by selective reaction and etching, in a manner similar to the SALICIDE concept. Fabrication is begun by coating the exposed Si surface of a substrate with a transparent oxide film, such that the Si/oxide interface exhibits low surface recombination velocity.

Abstract: The present invention relates a communication terminal for the synchronization of audio and visual information within a communication system. Audio communication between the parties to a video conference is achieved by digitizing the speech and transmitting the same over a packet based data network. Each party to the conference can draw the attention of the other party to an object on the screen using a pointer controlled by, say, a mouse or ball. The co-ordinates of each parties' pointer are incorporated, via a multiplexer, into the data packets containing the digitized speech and transmitted to the other party's terminal thereby ensuring the synchronization the pointer information with the digitized speech.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for efficiently tracking the location of a mobile station in a cellular network, especially in cellular networks having nonuniform traffic distribution. A mobile station reports to a base station only upon entering selected reporting cells. When communication with a mobile station is desired, the station is searched for in the vicinity of the last reporting cell in which the station appeared. The vicinity of a reporting cell is defined as the set of all intersecting cells reachable from the reporting cell without passing through another reporting cell.

Abstract: A hand held control device formed as a rigid body adapted to be gripped and carried by a single hand of a user and comprising a plurality of control elements operable by the thumb or a finger of the user's hand gripping and carrying the body, a pointing stick and a chirality detector for sensing whether a right or left hand is gripping and carrying the body for controlling the flow of information to or from a computer.

Abstract: A color image region management system suitable for retrieving a region having a specified color. Color class is determined for each picture element of image data in which the color data of each picture element is expressed by a trichromatic system. In the trichromatic system, it is determined to which color class the color of the picture element belongs of a plurality of color classes divided on the basis of a perceptual color system. There is a color index memory for constructing tree structure data reaching a root node with blocks each including at least one picture element as a leaf node, and calculating, for each node in the tree structure data and for each color class in regards to the picture elements included in the node, the frequency of picture elements having a color belonging to the color class. The calculated frequency of the picture elements is stored as a color index for each color class.

Abstract: A floating gate is inserted into the gate stack of an EEPROM cell. For an N channel EEPROM device, the floating gate is composed of a material having a conduction band edge (or fermi energy in the case of a metal or composite that includes a metal) at least one and preferably several kT electron volts below the conduction band edge of the channel region. The floating gate material thus has a larger electron affinity than the material of the channel region. This allows the insulator separating the floating gate and the channel to be made suitable thin (less than 100 angstroms) to reduce the writing voltage and to increase the number of write cycles that can be done without failure, without having charge stored on the floating gate tunnel back out to the channel region during read operations.

Abstract: Characters are recognized by a conventional OCR apparatus and converted into outline font form. The system includes a recognition device for optically reading printed characters and recognizing those to obtain information on the recognized characters consisting of text code information and character layout information, an outline font table for retaining outline font data of characters, a character box enlarging function for enlarging enclosing rectangles of the recognized characters obtained by the recognition device by a ratio of an outline font character box to a black pixel component to be drawn in the character box while referring to the outline font table, and modifying the information on the recognized characters by using the enlarged enclosing rectangles as new character boxes of the outline font.

Abstract: An improved history table is disclosed in which at least some of the entries are stored and accessed based upon the address of an instruction which historically preceeds the branch instruction itself. The access address may be used to determine the location of the entry in the table and/or may be stored in whole or in part in the entry itself. Furthermore, the improved history table may be of any known type including but not limited to branch history table types and decode history table types. The entries in the improved history table preferably are stored and accessed by the address of the preceeding taken branch target and preferably contain a number indicative of the number of instructions between the access address and the address of the branch instruction or its target.

Abstract: The present invention smooths piece-wise linear shapes by defining neighborhoods of vertices around vertices of the shape. One or more vectors is defined between the vertex and each of its neighbors. Vector sums are alternately multiplied by one of two scale factors. The scale factors are opposite in sign with the negative scale factor of larger magnitude. The vertices of the shape are displaced by the multiplied vector sums to attain new positions. The process is repeated with the vertices moving back and forth approximately through their final position until the shape is smoothed without shrinkage.

Abstract: In a multiple processor transaction processing system, a class response time goal for each class of transactions is enforced by a workload manager, which computes a current average class response time for each transaction class and derives a current class performance index for each of these classes with respect to its class response time goal. Whenever a transaction arrives, the workload manager considers a number of different possible transaction servers to which that arriving transaction could be routed and predicts estimated new values for the class performance indices for each of the considered routing choices. An overall goal satisfaction index is determined for each one and the routing choice corresponding to the best overall goal satisfaction index is selected as the routing choice.

Abstract: A large, fault tolerant, highly reliable semiconductor data storage system (memory) is designed to have the memory function striped across multiple symbol planes which comprise individual fault containment regions. Each fault containment region includes such a symbol plane which, in turn, stores at least one bit of any given memory word accessed in the system. The system further includes a processing core module, including at least symbol plane addressing controls, and a channel adapter is provided for selectively connecting the memory to high speed communications channels for, in turn, communicating with client processors or other functional entities attached to the data store system. The processing core contains an error correction/detection mechanism for the error checking and correction of all data fetched from the memory and for generating error correction and detection code bits for all data to be stored in memory.

Abstract: A system for making porous silicon on blank and patterned Si substrates by "immersion scanning", particularly suitable for fabricating light-emitting Si devices and utilizing an open electrolytic cell having a cathode and an opposing anode consisting of a Si substrate on which the porous silicon is to be formed, both disposed, with their opposing surfaces in parallel, in an aqueous HF solution electrolyte contained in the cell. The substrate anode is mounted to be movable relative to the electrolyte so as to be mechanically cycled or scanned in and out of the electrolyte at a programmable rate during anodization. The uniformity, thickness and porosity of the resulting anodized layer on the substrate are determined by the scanning speed, number of cycles, current density, and HF-based electrolyte parameters of the system, and the Si substrate resistivity, conductivity type, and crystal orientation.

Abstract: Portions showing greater specular reflection of an object to be displayed are displayed with pixels whose opacity, .alpha..sub.1, is emphasized according to the specular reflected component of a shading model, in which case the specular reflected component thus calculated for shading is also utilized for arithmetic operation of emphasized opacity, .alpha..sub.1, and high-speed processing is sought through tabulating various variables such as .alpha..sub.s (an additional opacity introduced for emphasis by a specular reflected component), .alpha..sub.n (a primary opacity), and G (a gradient vector).

Abstract: A method and apparatus are described by which a geometric model accurately reflecting the intention of the designer can be simply constructed in the generation or modification of a geometric model, without any constraint on operation such as an input order. Using geometric elements (planes, sides, vertexes, etc.) and geometric constraints (size, angle, etc.) between the elements as inputs, bidirectional dependency relation expressions for these geometric elements are created in a dependency relation expression generating mechanism of a geometric reasoning module, and based upon the expressions dependency conditions (dependency order data) are automatically calculated in a dependency order calculating mechanism. Then, attribute values of the geometric elements are determined in a geometric attribute calculating mechanism, and a geometric model is generated in a modeler and outputted to a display device.

Abstract: A memory management system for maximizing the number of contiguous free buffers to reduce the required number of free buffer pointers. Accordingly, with this invention a buffer memory is divided into two disjoint areas with one area having only contiguous free buffers while the other area has a combination of free and used buffers. This invention also has a means for maximizing the number of contiguous free buffers by using the buffers in the area having only contiguous free buffers only if there are no free buffers in the other area having both used and free buffers.